BRUCE’S “TRAVELS”—­VIOLENCE OF THE FRENCH JACOBINS—­NECKER.

TO THE HON.  H.S.  CONWAY.

STRAWBERRY HILL, Wednesday night, July 1, 1790.

It is certainly not from having anything to tell you, that I reply so soon, but as the most agreeable thing I can do in my confinement.  The gout came into my heel the night before last, perhaps from the deluge and damp.  I increased it yesterday by limping about the house with a party I had to breakfast.  To-day I am lying on the settee, unable to walk alone, or even to put on a slipper.  However, as I am much easier this evening, I trust it will go off.

I do not love disputes, and shall not argue with you about Bruce; but, if you like him, you shall not choose an author for me.  It is the most absurd, obscure, and tiresome book I know.  I shall admire if you have a clear conception about most of the persons and matters in his work; but, in fact, I do not believe you have.  Pray, can you distinguish between his cock and hen Heghes, and between all Yasouses and Ozoros? and do you firmly believe that an old man and his son were sent for and put to death, because the King had run into a thorn-bush, and was forced to leave his clothes behind him!  Is it your faith, that one of their Abyssinian Majesties pleaded not being able to contribute towards sending for a new Abuna, because he had spent all his money at Venice in looking-glasses?  And do you really think that Peter Paez was a Jack-of-all-trades, and built palaces and convents without assistance, and furnished them with his own hands?  You, who are a little apt to contest most assertions, must have strangely let out your credulity!  I could put forty questions to you as wonderful; and, for my part, could as soon credit ——.

I am tired of railing at French barbarity and folly.  They are more puerile now serious, than when in the long paroxysm of gay levity.  Legislators, a senate, to neglect laws, in order to annihilate coats of arms and liveries! to pull down a King, and set up an Emperor!  They are hastening to establish the tribunal of the praetorian guards; for the sovereignty, it seems, is not to be hereditary.  One view of their Fete of the 14th,[1] I suppose, is to draw money to Paris; and the consequence will be, that the deputies will return to the provinces drunk with independence and self-importance, and will commit fifty times more excesses, massacres, and devastations, than last year.  George Selwyn says, that Monsieur, the King’s brother, is the only man of rank from whom they cannot take a title.

[Footnote 1:  The grand federation in the Champ de Mars, on the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile.]